elderhood

Life in the Elder Hallway

/ nagneberg48 / 6 Comments

July 2, 2024

Come join me in “Paris.” On gorgeous summer days this is where you might find me–writing letters and emails, dipping into my basket of miscellaneous meditation books and saved articles, jotting notes to myself, adding to my To DO and TBR lists, and often taking a deep cleansing breath, as I open my journal for more reflection time.

These are rich, but quiet days. Days I need right now.

I am reading for the second time How To Walk into a Room, The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away by Emily P. Freeman. Freeman uses the metaphor of a “room,” to reflect on decision-making and changes in our lives. Freeman emphasizes the importance of naming the room we inhabit now, and I am more and more aware that my current room is a room of elderhood, of old age.

This room is spacious with several corners and areas designated for different aspects of my life: my work as a spiritual director, as the facilitator of a writing group, as writer of this blog, along with my identities including wife, mother, grandmother, friend, sister, and active church member. The room has a number of doors often open to welcome others and windows, reminding me to pay attention to the diverse movement around me. There are places to sit for solitary reflection and for attentive conversations.

In my 60’s I often said I hoped my elder years would be a time of expansiveness–a time to grow bigger–and I needed a BIG room. Now, however, in my 70’s I have revised that thought. Instead, this is a time of deepening. And I think my room encourages that intention to deepen, to grow deeper into who I was created to be. That fits right now, but at some point, perhaps my room will be smaller, and I won’t need as many designated areas. My room will modify into a room of contentment. Not passiveness, but a contemplative contentment.

My father seemed to live in that room in his last years–his 80’s into his 90’s. He spent much of his day in prayer and meditation without realizing that he was living as a contemplative in his last room. That was not a word familiar to him, but when I offered it to him, I could see that it resonated, and he accepted, even welcomed it.

This summer, however, I think I am in a hallway. Wandering beyond my room, but not far from it. I am just a bit antsy, for I have had more open time than what has been normal for me. Most of the time that feels good, for it means I have more time to read and more time to respond to whims, and more awareness of how I want to use my energy and the pacing needed along the way.

Freeman describes hallways in this way:

A hallway is a place of permission. It's a space where you're allowed, compelled even, to ask your questions, perhaps the kinds of questions that your rooms haven't allowed. It's a space to try on possibilities and to reimagine what could be.

The hallway may be the space between two rooms,...but it could also be a pause, a space where you enter just for a time, to clear your head, to take a beat, to weigh your options, to remember who you are...it's a waiting room, a bridge, and a deep breath. pp. 94-95.

In this hallway I have encountered some words to ponder.

  • Job died, an old man and full of days. (Job 42:16) Margaret Silf in her Daily Readings says, “To die an old man is one thing; but to have lived a life in which every day was really lived, that is quite another. ” p.201
  • From a laugh-out loud novel I am currently reading, Sandwich by Catherine Newman: “(‘Dad and I defrosted the chest freezer’ is an actual text I once sent in response to a question about our weekend and how it was going.)” p. 45
  • Sara B. Franklin describes Judith Jones in her new book The Editor, How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America in this way, “she wore her age like a fact.” (quoted in the NYT Book Review by Alexandra Jacobs, Sunday, June 30, 2024)
  • “I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet to come surprises.” Elizabeth Gilbert

Each of these quotations feels true to me, to whom I am now and the person I am becoming and the person I was created to be. The trick is finding the rhythm, the space in my room, for each of these truths. And that’s where the hallway comes in –or in my case “Paris.”

You are welcome to join me there.

An Invitation

How would you describe the room you are inhabiting now? I would love to know.

Notes for Democracy:

What will you do today to save democracy? I plan to write more “get out the vote” postcards. Check out my recent post, “A Postcard Primer” https://wordpress.com/post/livingonlifeslabyrinth.com/3619 for links to participate in postcard campaigns. And I highly recommend reading today’s newsletters by Robert Hubbell and Heather Cox Richardson about the Supreme Court’s attack on democracy. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com https://roberthubbell.substack.com

Book Report: Two Nonfiction Books By Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

/ nagneberg48 / 4 Comments

August 25, 2022

I was 61 when I read Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s book The Third Chapter, Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50, published in 2009. I am now 74 and almost at the end of the time of life Lawrence-Lightfoot writes about in the book.

This book was pivotal in my aging evolution.

We were living in Madison, WI, at the time, and I had not found my place in that community. I had trained as a spiritual director when we lived in Ohio and had a private practice there. I had led spirituality groups in an organization for those touched by cancer and also facilitated retreats and taught T’ai Chi in a variety of places, but in my current life I simply had not found a foothold. That was for a variety of reasons, I realize now, but at the time I had no idea how to adjust to this unexpected loss of role, let alone what might be next.

The Third Chapter helped me acknowledge the sadness and grief I felt, but also opened me to imagine new possibilities; new ways of viewing myself and who I might become as I aged. When we moved back to St Paul, after almost 20 years away, I was thrilled to discover ways I could live with purpose and meaning. The time described in The Third Chapter has been and continues to be a time of thriving for me.

The book also gave me a name for this stage of life. “The Third Chapter.” The other day a writer friend, who was feeling certain life changes swirling around her, said she felt as if she was experiencing a midlife crisis again, but of course, we are well beyond our midlife years. How important it is, I think, to give voice to these elder years.

In the inside cover of the book I wrote two questions: What are the words you use to describe this stage of life? What words do you find yourself using frequently when you talk about yourself? I didn’t know when I wrote those words how those would not only be key questions for my own reflection, but they would become questions as I helped develop Third Chapter programs at my church.

So back to the book. By telling others’ stories, Lawrence-Lightfoot focuses on the creative and purposeful learning that goes on in this stage of life and explores the ways men and women at this stage

find ways of changing, adapting, exploring, mastering, and channeling their energies, skills, and passions into new domains of learning. I believe that successful aging requires that people continue–across their lifetime–to express a curiosity about their changing world, an ability to adapt to shifts in their developmental and physical capacities, and an eagerness to engage new perspectives, skills, and appetites. This requires the willingness to take risks, experience vulnerability and uncertainty, learn from experimentation and failure, seek guidance and counsel from younger generations, and develop new relationships of support and intimacy.

p. 7

No small task. That should keep us engaged!

This book was the first of what is now my extensive collection of books and aging and spirituality. I am still in my “third chapter,” but I would welcome a new book from Lawrence-Lightfoot about the years after 75. Hint, hint.

In the meantime I found another book by her, Exit, The Endings That Set Us Free (2012). Once again deftly telling others’ stories, she explores the variety of endings in our lives and how to navigate them. She notes that our culture values beginnings, launchings. We hold entrepreneurs in high regard. But exits are ignored and often viewed as failures.

We often slink our way out the door, becoming invisible as we do so. One of the women she interviews says, “I don’t want the exit to be about closed doors. Where is the open door! Where is the new life?” (p. 68)

How do we open a door when we end a relationship, a job or career, a role, a major project? And how do we purposefully and meaningful approach the final exit, our own death or the death of a loved one? This book, like The Third Chapter, tells illustrative stories so well, encouraging readers to reflect on our own lives and the endings we have experienced or will experience.

I thought about the acknowledged ending to a job I loved–how I felt celebrated and honored and how that helped me let go. But I also remember another time when my last day in a role I had also loved was totally ignored. No “Thank you.” No “We’ll miss you.” I am sorry I didn’t take it upon myself to create an exit ritual.

A note about Lawrence-Lightfoot: She is a MacArthur prize-winning sociologist, the author of ten books, and is the first African-American woman in Harvard’s history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor. She is someone worth reading, for sure.

An Invitation

Have any books been a guide for you in this aging evolution? I would love to know.

Note:

On another topic, for those of you in the St Paul, MN area, my husband Bruce is having his second garage sale of the season this weekend, Friday and Saturday, August 26-27, at our house, 2025 Wellesley Ave. As many of you know, he paints discarded furniture and accessories and the proceeds from his sales go to support the work of Lutheran Social Service’s Rezik House, a residence for homeless youth. Access to the sale is through the alley only.